(Jan. 4, 2007) Sunni-Shia power politics and U.S.-Egyptian relations are at the center of a dispute over a satellite television station that is the latest weapon in the arsenal of Iraq’s insurgents. Al-Zawraa, an Iraq-based television version of the jihadi Web sites, is being broadcast across the Arab world by Nilesat, a satellite provider answerable […]

First Published: October 2, 2006 Memo: To Arabs and Muslims Re: The Middle East It’s your own fault. That’s right, the Bush administration can’t be held responsible for the mess they have made of the Middle East. You Arabs and Muslims are to blame. How can anyone be expected to develop a policy for this […]

Published on Thursday, August 3, 2006 by CommonDreams.org It is very likely that the world will look back at the summer of 2006 as a seminal moment in Middle East history. We may well be seeing, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says, “the birth pangs of a new Middle East.” But it is also […]

February 28, 2006 The visit to the Middle East last week by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brought with it another reminder that American Middle East policy is firmly wedged between Iraq and the hard guys. There were never any easy answers to the Middle East morass, complicated further by the recent outbreak of […]

First Published: February 23, 2006 This week’s visit to the region by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brings with it another reminder that U.S. Middle East policy is firmly wedged between Iraq and the hard guys. There were never any easy answers to the Middle East morass. Washington’s drunken lurching in search of exactly that […]

Published on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 by CommonDreams.org Is that laughter I hear echoing from the mountains of Baluchistan? The latest survey results out of the Middle East show that America’s favorability rating is now, essentially, zero. That’s down from as high as 75 percent in some Muslim countries just four years ago. Two new […]

Published on Friday, April 9, 2004 by CommonDreams.org Operation Resolute Sword. That�s what the U.S. military in Iraq is calling its effort to crush rebellious Shi�ite forces. Osama bin Laden could not have chosen a more inflammatory name. Who comes up with these things? Why not just stage a photo-op with President Bush in Richard […]

Published on Monday, April 5, 2004 by CommonDreams.org The eruption of bloody clashes between Iraqi Shi�ites and Coalition forces, combined with a threat from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to assassinate the head of Lebanon�s Shi�ite Hizbullah movement, raise the frightening prospect that the U.S. could soon face a powerful new enemy, with potentially disastrous […]

Published on Thursday, October 23, 2003 by the Detroit Free Press It all seemed so simple. Send in U.S. forces. Free and protect the local population. Install a pro-Western government acceptable to all factions. Build a wider Middle East peace. Then depart to the cheers of a grateful citizenry. But President Ronald Reagan’s encounter with […]

Published on Wednesday, October 8, 2003 by CommonDreams.org Once again American strategic interests in the Islamic world have been sucker-punched by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and much of the U.S. body politic remains oblivious to the fact that they are even in the fight. President Bush’s defense of Israel’s attack on Syria in the wake of […]